Road signpost?
created: Transcription from editor.
source date: Perhaps Hellenistic
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: https://doi.org/10.60760/unibo/igcyrgvcyr2 and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

[...] 5150, from [...], pp. 139-140 (= [...], pp. 199-200), and [...], p. 224; [...] 107350. Cf. [...], pp. 169-171; [...], p. 87.

ἱππικός

Route autorisée (?) pour chevaux.

Road allowed (?) for horses.

Strada (?) per cavalli.

(ربما تعني ضمنياً: شوارع مسموح بها (؟)) (؟) للخيول

Franz in CIG considered that Della Cella and Pacho had seen one and the same inscription and he was probably right, as Pacho's description and map point to the road issuing from the South gate towards Balagrae. Another such mention was found by Oliverio on the road from Cyrene to Apollonia (see IGCyr030800) and was probably not visible in Della Cella's time.

It has been admitted since the first travellers that the word δρόμος should be supplied and Dobias-Lalou argued after Della Cella that the inscription indicates a road allowed for horses and carriages, not a racecourse as Pacho suggested about this inscription and Oliverio about the other one.

Criscuolo now prefers a subaudible τόπος, i.e. a place where horses might stay (and Chandezon, per litteras, even suggested a grazing place). However those interesting ideas would not fit the place well. The question cannot be definitely decided.

A new way for interpretation was opened by E. Rosamilia when publishing IGCyr134400. Although he eventually does not think that both inscriptions are one and the same, he notes that Ἱππικός might also be a personal name. However Della Cella mentioned «grandi caratteri» and Pacho «lettres de plusieurs pouces». The ancient French inch was 0.028 long and as he did not say simply '2 or 3 inches' the letters seen by him were probably taller. The idea of a signpost should perhaps not be dropped.

Additional note 2023: the man's name Ἱππικός is now attested at Taucheira in the first century CE (unpublished reading by Dobias-Lalou of IRCyr2020 T.680). It does not wholly discard the other objections against a man's name in this inscription.